Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/335

 Memorial of <;<. .///// . I. Early. 328

gade in the famous and fatal charge of the 600 on the Russian guns at Balaklava, " while all the world wondered," was never in a fight before or after the Crimean war, but he was made lieutenant-general, Knight Commander of the Bath, Commander of the Legion of Honor, and lionized generally.

General Sir James Yorke Scarlett, who commanded " the heavies" and succeeded Lucan, had a similar record, and became, too, lieu- tenant-general and Knight Commander of the Bath.

General George Charles Bingham, Earl of Lucan, who commanded the cavalry division, consisting of these two brigades, beyond some amateur soldiering with the Russians in 1828, never smelt powder before or after the Crimean war, but he became Knight Commander of the Bath, lieutenant-general and field marshal.

What do these cavalrymen know of war compared to Forrest, Stuart, Hampton, Wheeler, or the cavalry Lees ?

Robert Cornelius Napier, Lord Napier of Magdala, as he is famili- arly called, had served well in India and China, and he received an annuity of ^2,000, was made field marshal, Knight Commander of the Bath, and a catalogue of honors for a little skirmish with and a general demolition of King Theodore in Abyssinia. There were many skirmishes in Early's campaigns, the names of which I have not called, that exceeded all his fighting. His Royal Highness, George William Frederick Charles, Duke of Cambridge, field mar- shal and long time commander-in-chief of the British army, was in two fights, the Alma and Inkermann.

General Sir Garnet Joseph Wolsley, viscount K. P., K. C. B., G. C. M. G., D. C. L., LL. D., fought the Burmese, the Russians in the Crimea, the Ashantees on the African Gold Coast, and finally Egyptians and Arabs. He is a scholar, a gentlemen and a gallant soldier, twice wounded, and has skirmished around the world in good shape, getting ,25,000 from his government for undoing a poor African king, and no end of military and civic honors, and is now commander-in-chief of the British army.

John Bull has bullied the world. He has done the largest real estate business on the smallest piece of land ; he has conducted the largest wholesale trade on the smallest retail capital; he has stretched out the longest lines with the fewest men, and has got more military distinction for the smallest lot of fighting than anybody else that ever lived.

In four years the Confederates fought 2,261 battles, an average of nearly two a day. Six hundred of them were fought on Virginia